Oh who are we kidding? It’s obvious the clear winner of this category is the Henwife! However there are some runners up so I will discuss them all in turn.
The Henwife wins outright on the merit of her extraordinary pragmatism. In fact, rereading the story after a few years it strikes me how pragmatic the conversations are in it. There’s none of the overblown drama of some of the Grimms or Lang fairytales, no speeches of undying love or loss, just a princess and a Henwife kicking back and talking about life. Particularly pertinent is the example of the second time the Henwife helps Trembling – where she asks if Trembling is going to the church and Trembling says ‘if I could get the going’ which seems like a laid-back sort of way to ask the Henwife to help (or annoyingly passive-aggressive depending on the tone). Anyway, this Henwife! This Henwife, people! Look at her. She’s so unusual! She rather reminds me of Merlin from Sword in the Stone, and in fact that would explain rather a lot. If she is living backwards through time and has done all of this before it rather explains why she suddenly turned up after seven years time to go ‘Hey – are you going to church?’. It makes the event somewhat more along the lines of a question to clarify if she got the timing right and less of a bewildering mix of ‘how do you not know she doesn’t go to church and hasn’t for seven years’ and ‘why on earth didn’t you offer to help earlier??’.
The Coat of Darkness aside, the Henwife is exceptionally patient with her young charge and rather good natured, letting Trembling pick out more and more ridiculous colours for her dresses and horses as time goes on and apparently being completely happy to be left behind at the House/Castle when Trembling gets married. Quirks aside, she’s obviously not to be messed with and can summon life itself through her magic powers. I have to wonder if she is Trembling’s mother who was very fond of birds and forgot all about her daughters due to avian-induced amnesia.
Runners Up:
1. The Whale. Oh gosh – the whale! Not only is it probably either enchanted or a magician in disguise but this whale is the most extraordinary creature we’ve met since we met the revolutionary regicidal horse. It can beach itself and swim back out to sea again without effort. It can swallow and regurgitate a fully grown person – holding her magically on the beach in the meantime. It has a strict list of rules it follows in the interests of fair play – including regurgitating the princess three times so she can try to get help, displaying its only weak spot to any challengers to allow them a chance to shoot it, and although it can obviously stop the princess from talking (after all it won’t let her speak to her husband), it allows her to talk to other people so she can explain the rules. Where did this whale come from? Was it in league with Fair? What did it want? What was it going to do? Why did it have to die? So many questions!
2. The horse with diamond spots on it. Just – it has diamond spots, people. Diamond.
3. The King of Erin who doesn’t seem to exist at all and doesn’t care that his daughter is being treated like a servant or that his other daughter’s beau dumped her for a mysterious church goer.
4. The Coat of Darkness and its weird monopoly over Black Satin Dresses.
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